"The Island" is fun, fast paced, and thought-provoking.

Rating: 10/10 (15 August 2005)

I usually assume that if the critics in their "wisdom" say that a movie is bad, I'm likely to love it--and that was certainly true in this particular instance. I regret its relatively poor showing at the box office. I guess that other people listened. "The Island" was a choice for me because of the moral and ethical issues involved--of course, Ewan McGregor never hurts--so I was determined to check it out. I think that they dealt with the question realistically--if the technology becomes available, it WILL happen. Where there is money, people will use it to their own advantage, no matter the cost to others. I'm not a Michael Bay fan, so I didn't really need all the crashes and mayhem, but at least it wasn't tremendously gory. I very much liked the sly humor that kept it from being depressing, especially the encounter between Lincoln and Tom. The naive attraction between the leads was cute, and Jordan's aggressiveness when they discovered sex was priceless. In fact I very much liked the fact that the Jordan beat Lincoln in a fight and saved him when he was being beat up, as well. Also, the payoff at the end, while not totally unexpected, did satisfy my need for justice. There were some not quite understood points--like: they were given memory imprints of childhood and growing up, but they had never seen a baby or a child? Say what?? And how come Lincoln knew how (and where) to swipe the credit card to get the information booth to work? Sure, he had Tom's memories popping up, but seems like that would just include the major things--like Latin and flying... If that wasn't the case, then there's that baby question again... Hey, NO movie is perfect.